ABSTRACT
As Rene Remond and many others have shown, the extreme right tradition in France is an ancient one. Front National politics is a combination of many of these elements into a 'front' for electoral purposes. Front National politicians around Le Pen were severally in most of the extreme right's battles in the Fourth and Fifth Republics. Front National ideology is a combination of various diverse threads from the extreme right, all woven by Le Pen. The Front National claims a 'cultural' and not a racial justification for its stance, but it enables the extreme right to turn on those who are 'different'. In French terms, the Front National's acceptance of 'republicanism', that is, of the parliamentary system, is innovative for the French extreme right. A renovation of the extreme right in the domain was overdue and the 'technocrats' of the Club de l'Horloge provided the foundations for a new rightism, even before the 'Anglo-Saxon' monetarist right became fashionable.
